Germany to Close Airbase in Niger After Negotiations on Soldiers Immunity Fail – Reports
Sputnik – 07.07.2024
The German armed forces will give up its airbase in Niger, which was used as a military transport hub, by August 31, as the sides failed to extend the agreement concerning the base, German media reported on Saturday, citing the German Defense Ministry.
The talks broke down after the new Nigerien authorities had refused to grant German soldiers with immunity from prosecution, the NTV news outlet reported, citing a document the ministry had presented before the parliament.
Germany expects to withdraw its troops from the country by the end of August as well.
The German military has used the base in Niger’s capital, Niamey since 2013 as a supply center for its armed forces in neighboring Mali, which were stationed there as part of a UN peacekeeping mission.
Nigerien authorities, which took power in a military takeover in July 2023, have since then also terminated military agreements with France and the United States, which led to the French and US forces’ withdrawal from the country.
Europe’s Green Energy Plans Stall As Leading Companies Reduce Expansion Plans
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | July 3, 2024
Europe’s leading green energy producer, Statkraft, is drastically scaling back its plans for new wind and solar power plants – due to falling electricity prices and rising costs, so reports Germany’s online Blackout News, a leading site for independent German energy news.
According to company CEO, Birgitte Vartdal, market conditions have become more difficult as the company’s ambitious targets for wind energy and solar power are now being called into question.
The new Statkraft target is two to two and a half GW instead of an originally planned 4 gigawatts annually.
“In the offshore wind energy sector, the Group is now planning a total output of six to eight GW. The original target was ten GW,” Blackout News adds.
The scaleback follows other European countries’ plans to reduce expansion, including Danish energy company Orsted, which “has lowered its targets by more than ten GW” and has also “canceled two offshore wind projects in the USA and reported impairments amounting to 28.4 billion Danish kroner (approx. 3.8 billion euros).”
Portugal’s largest energy supplier, Energias de Portugal (EDP), has also reduced its investment plans – due to the “deterioration in market conditions.” Moreover, French energy supplier Engie earlier had postponed developing hydrogen projects.
Leading officials blame projects having become “much more challenging” and offering “no relative returns.”
As a result, solar and wind equipment manufacturers have seen their values plummeting and ESG equity funds have “recently suffered outflows of 38 billion dollars,” reports Blackout News.
Blackout News is operated by an independent and non-partisan small group of engineers with experience in energy management.
Bavarian Court Enables German Counterintelligence to Monitor AfD in Bavaria
Sputnik – 01.07.2024
The Munich administrative court has rejected the claim of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party against the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which suspected the party of right-wing extremism, enabling the agency to continue monitoring of the AfD, media reported on Monday, citing the court ruling.
The monitoring started in 2022 and its expected outcome was a report that would either confirm or remove the initial suspicion, the Muenchner Merkur newspaper reported.
In May, a higher administrative court in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia ruled that the federal agency’s decision to classify the party as “suspected of right-wing extremism” was justified.
The domestic intelligence agency has labeled three AfD chapters — in Thuringia, Saxony and in Saxony-Anhalt — as “extremist.” Earlier in June, AfD member Eugene Schmidt told Sputnik that the attempt to ban the party was an anti-democratic procedure that revealed the political establishment in Germany was overwhelmed and threatened by the party’s success in the 2024 European Parliament elections.
German lawmaker Marco Wanderwitz said in June that he had convinced enough members of German parliament to submit a motion to ban the AfD over alleged ties to far-right extremism. If the Bundestag approves the motion, the potential banning of the AfD would then have to be considered by the Federal Constitutional Court.
Catching Up To Germany, The “Climate Leader”
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | June 15, 2024
Here in New York, our leaders fancy us to be the “climate leader.” After all, our legislature has enacted the “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act” of 2019, setting out the most aggressive mandatory emissions-reduction targets of all the U.S. states. Allegedly, 70% of our electricity will come from “renewables” by 2030. Nobody can top us!
But can we really catch up to Germany? Germany was in the “climate leadership” game before almost anybody else had even heard of it. It was all the way back in 1990 that Germany adopted its first emissions-reduction target — 25 to 30 percent fewer CO₂ emissions by 2005, compared to 1987 levels. In 2000, while New York was still in its climate diapers, Germany passed its Renewable Energy Act, granting large subsidies for the development of wind farms. In 2010 Germany adopted its “Energiewende” legislation with mandatory emissions-reductions targets of 80-95% by 2050. All along, the country has been on a crash program to build wind turbines and solar panels for well over 30 years.
So sorry, New York. Germany is the true “climate leader.” Perhaps we should check in on how it is going over there.
In a piece on January 3, Reuters provided the statistics from Germany for the most recent full year, 2023. The headline is “Renewable energy’s share on German power grids reaches 55% in 2023.”
The share of renewables on Germany’s power grids rose by 6.6 percentage points to 55% of the total last year, the sector’s regulator said on Wednesday, as Europe’s largest economy moves closer to its 2030 target. . . [of] 80% of its [electricity generation].
The achievement elicited some self-congratulatory happy talk from Environment Minister (and Green Party member) Robert Habeck:
“We have broken the 50% mark for renewables for the first time,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement. “Our measures to simplify planning and approvals are starting to take effect.”
Read a little farther, though, and you find out that only 43.2% of the 55% came from wind and solar generators. Most of the rest (8.4%) came from “biomass,” otherwise known as wood chips imported from the U.S. — probably not what you were thinking of as the supposedly emissions-free “renewables.” (The remaining 3+% consists of hydro and some unspecified “other renewables.”).
Perhaps you are wondering, despite Habeck’s happy talk, how can it be that after 30+ years of a crash program, with enormous subsidies, to build wind and solar generators to provide electricity, Germany is only up to getting 43% of its electricity from those sources? Is there maybe some problem? If you are wondering about those things, you will not find the answer here.
And then there’s the question of whether a huge build-out of wind and solar electricity generation might have any collateral consequences for a modern industrial economy. For example, might wind and solar generation be more expensive than electricity generation by fossil fuels? Here are the latest consumer electricity price data from Eurostat, covering the second half of 2023. Key quote:
For household consumers in the EU (defined for the purpose of this article as medium-sized consumers with an annual consumption between 2 500 Kilowatt hours (KWh) and 5 000 KWh), electricity prices in the second half of 2023 were highest in Germany (€0.4020 per KWh), Ireland (€0.3794 per KWh), Belgium (€0.3778 per KWh) and Denmark (€0.3554 per KWh).
Somehow, great “climate leader” Germany has the very highest consumer electricity prices in all the EU. The 40.2 euro cents per kWh is equivalent to 43 U.S. cents at the recent exchange rate of 1.07. The latest data from the U.S. EIA gives the average U.S. consumer electricity price as 16.68 cents per kWh for March 2024. That makes the German electricity price more than two and a half times the U.S. price.
Aren’t wind and solar generation supposed to be cheaper than fossil fuels? Somehow that doesn’t seem to be working out. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that no matter how much wind and solar you build, you can’t get rid of any of the fossil fuel generators, because you need them all for backup of intermittency. So you end up paying for two redundant systems.
Then there is the effect of high energy prices on economic growth. How’s that going in Germany? Here’s a February 23 report from Euronews, with the statistics from Germany for the 2023 year:
Year-on-year GDP growth was -0.2% in Q4 2023, a notch better than Q3 2023’s -0.3% and also in line with market expectations. For the full year 2023, Germany’s GDP shrank 0.3%.
U.S. GDP growth for 2023 was reported as 2.5% by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
A guy named Theodor Weimer, head of the Deutsche Börse, gave a speech in April to a group of Bavarian business leaders. The speech became public when it was released on YouTube last week, and it was then covered by the Telegraph. Key quote:
The coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz was, [Weimer] argued, a “catastrophe,” Germany was “economically on the way to becoming a developing country” and “one thing is clear: our reputation in the world has never been so bad.”
And finally, in the European elections just held last week, the German Green Party has been reported one of the biggest losers, going from 21 seats to just 12, a loss of 9, or almost half of the prior total.
Well, maybe being the “climate leader” is not so great after all. At least, maybe, the people are starting to catch on. Here in New York, it will take a while longer.
IS A DRAFT ON THE HORIZON?
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | June 20, 2024
Is the military draft coming back? Will women be required to register for selective service? With a world war with Russia seeming to be more likely as the days pass, we break down the latest controversial proposals by America to increase readiness.
Polls show east German state elections will be historic turning point, but the establishment has a plan to block the AfD
By John Cody | Remix News | June 21, 2024
German elections in the eastern states this autumn are likely to send shockwaves through the German political landscape, with the latest poll from Saxony showing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) leading at 32 percent. However, AfD performing well in these elections is mostly already baked in, and now the German political establishment is looking for ways to keep the party out of power, including what will likely be extremely unorthodox alliances.
The real twist in these polls is the introduction of the newly formed leftist BSW party, led by Sahra Wagenknecht. In the poll from Saxony, the party is in third place with 15 percent. Until recently, Wagenknecht’s party did not even exist.
The Christian Democrats (CDU) are in a close second behind the AfD. If the elections were held now, the only possible coalitions would be AfD and BSW, AfD and CDU, and CDU and BSW. In such a scenario, any governing coalition in Saxony would only need 44 percent of the vote to govern, as most parties would not make the cut to enter parliament.

Why are only these three coalition combinations possible? The polling continues to reveal the historic crash of left-liberal parties, with the Greens at 5 percent, the Social Democrats at 5 percent, and the Free Democrats at a measly 2 percent. With a 5 percent threshold, all of these parties are threatened with being voted entirely out of parliament, which would be a catastrophe for the governing coalition parties.
As a result, the CDU will have limited options about whom to work with when all the votes are counted, at least according to current polling.
It is true that the BSW is considered so far to the left that any coalition with it will immediately harm CDU’s credibility. Furthermore, on key issues such as the war in Ukraine, the CDU and BSW parties are diametrically opposed, with BSW promoting an immediate ceasefire. However, the CDU and BSW coalition is the most likely outcome if both parties can secure enough votes, as the CDU will be under enormous pressure to choose this scenario, even if the CDU and AfD are closer ideologically on a range of domestic issues.
For starters, CDU has ruled out any cooperation with the AfD, and in fact, some of its members are actively working to ban the AfD party entirely.
Secondly, the BSW and CDU have not ruled out cooperation at the state level, according to German news outlet MDR. For example, in the eastern state of Thuringia, polling shows a similar situation as in Saxony, with the AfD and the CDU leading, while the BSW has soared higher, reaching 21 percent. There, the BSW regional leader Katja Wolf ruled out a coalition with the AfD but said alliances with other parties are possible.

“It must be possible to talk and reach compromises with all democratic parties,” said Wolf.
BSW is well positioned to serve as a “spoiler” party against the AfD, just as many on the left had hoped for. The CDU, in turn, will work with the far-left party as needed, and the media will likely be in place to support its decision. Importantly, the German political establishment, including the CDU, will not have to compromise on key foreign policy issues, as the BSW will have little influence on the course of the war in Ukraine at the local state level. The war will continue, open borders will remain in place, and the AfD will be contained.
At least, that is the plan.
Of course, even a shift of a few points in either direction could mean a BSW and CDU coalition is no longer possible, leaving AfD a window to enter a potential coalition government. However, there are still many months to go until elections are held. The AfD could lose or gain support in the east, although it appears to have hit a temporary ceiling in the east over the last year.
If the EU elections were any barometer, the media and the government will likely wait until the final two months of the state elections to spring investigations, launch arrests, and wage a massive media campaign against the right. Despite this last media onslaught against the AfD, it appeared to have little effect in the east of Germany, where the AfD rose to be the number one party in the country.
The AfD is hoping to break the firewall. It is up to voters in the east if this will ever happen.
Germany lists BDS movement as ‘extremist’ for questioning ‘Israel’
Al Mayadeen | June 19, 2024
A new report issued by Germany’s Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser on Tuesday revealed that it was dealing with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as a “suspected extremist case,” noting that it had “links to secular Palestinian extremism.”
The report claimed that the BDS is not a homogeneous association, party, or organization.
German news site Watson cited the report as saying that “there is sufficient, strong, factual evidence to suggest that [the] BDS thereby violates, among other things, the idea of international understanding” by questioning “Israel’s” existence.
The report said, “After the terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, BDS-affiliated groups mobilized and participated in many anti-Israel gatherings and intensified their demands for an end to an alleged ‘Israeli apartheid’ as well as called for a boycott of companies and goods related to Israel.”
German news site Judische Allgemeine quoted Faeser as stating, “We must oppose internal threats from extremism just as decisively as [we do] external threats,” adding, “We absolutely have to break the spiral of escalations in the Middle East, leading to even more disgusting hatred of Jews here.”
“Security authorities are reacting with great vigilance to the latest developments and are actively taking action against any kind of anti-Israel and antisemitic agitation,” she continued.
German-Israeli Society welcomes decision
Meanwhile, German public-broadcasting radio station Deutschlandfunk confirmed reports that Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency labeled the BDS movement as an extremist movement – and the German-Israeli Society (DIG) welcomed the decision.
DIG’s president Volker Beck released a statement applauding the announcement.
“For the first time, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution names the anti-Israeli boycott movement BDS as a suspected extremist case in its annual report,” stressing, “This supports the assessment of the German Bundestag in its ‘confront the BDS-Movement Resolutely – Fighting Antisemitism’ resolution in 2019.”
According to Beck, “All forms of antisemitism must be fought equally – consistently. The trivialization of or even sympathy by some cultural institutions with [the] BDS must finally stop.”
“We welcome the recent bans on associations issued by Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, which weakened the infrastructure of significant extremist-antisemitic organizations. We call for this course to be consistently continued,” she concluded.
This comes only days after more than 2,000 German academics signed a letter calling for the resignation of the country’s Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger criticizing her efforts to penalize scholars supporting pro-Palestinian students.
The scholars emphasized in a statement that “academics in Germany are experiencing an unprecedented attack on their fundamental rights, on the 75th anniversary of the Basic Law.”
They emphasized that Stark-Watzinger’s recent actions have made her position “untenable”.
“The withdrawal of funding ad personam on the basis of political statements made by researchers is contrary to the Basic Law: teaching and research are free. The internal order to examine such political sanctions is a sign of constitutional ignorance and political abuse of power,” the statement pointed out.
Germany moves closer to AfD ban, Greens claim party is a ‘security risk for people and democracy’
BY DÉNES ALBERT | REMIX NEWS | JUNE 18, 2024
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is now the second most popular party in the country, is moving closer to being banned. Christian Democrat (CDU) MP Marco Wanderwitz says he has enough MPs in his corner to table a motion for an AfD ban in the Bundestag.
He noted that he has gathered 37 MPs who will support the ban while speaking with the far-left newspaper taz.
Wanderwitz is still waiting on the Münster Higher Administrative Court. That court has since agreed with the classification of the AfD as a “suspected right-wing extremist” organization in May; however, the court has not yet released a written justification behind its decision. Wanderwitz says he is waiting for the court to release its written report before moving forward with a ban proposal.
“Once the reasons for the ruling are available, we will take a close look at it and then submit our updated and well-founded application for a ban,” announced Wanderwitz. The court has at least five months from the date of its decision to release its written report, but it is unclear what the court will publish in its response.
If the Bundestag votes on a ban, the Constitutional Court, Germany’s highest court, would have the final decision on whether a ban is legal. In any case, an actual ban could throw the German political system into turmoil and raise questions about democratic legitimacy in Germany.
Notably, Wanderwitz lost his own seat to an AfD politician during local elections, making a ban personal for him. The AfD’s success in the east of Germany, where it is the number one party and likely to win several regional elections in the autumn, also means that the governing parties are facing the prospect of completely losing power in a number of German states. In some cases, their vote totals may be so low that they are completely kicked out of state parliaments, giving them a strong incentive to seek out a ban of the rival AfD. These eastern states may even become ungovernable without the AfD’s participation in government, which is upping the ante for the mainstream parties to fast-track a ban.
Other parties besides the CDU are racing to secure a ban of the party, which has surged on the popularity of its anti-immigration and anti-war proposals. Green politician Marcel Emmerich is calling on the conference of interior ministers to set up a task force against the AfD, which would collect evidence to support a ban.
“The AfD is a security risk for people and democracy,” he told the taz newspaper.
Notably, the open borders policies of the ruling mainstream parties have fueled a huge increase in violent crime in Germany, with approximately 6 out of 10 violent crimes committed by foreigners in 2023, a record high. Violent crime also hit a record high in the same year. Recently, a wave of knife attacks has made constant headlines in Germany, including an Afghan radical who killed a German police officer in Mannheim and another Afghan who attacked German football fans while they were watching the European Football Championships in Wolmirstedt. The latter stabbed one 23-year-old man to death and then attacked another party where he wounded three men, two seriously, before being shot dead.
The AfD has long argued that these attacks are the real security threat in Europe.
The red-red-green government in Bremen is also supporting such a task force, and Social Democrat (SPD) interior ministers are looking to discuss the issue of an AfD ban at a conference on Wednesday.
West hindering nuclear deal’s revival, blaming Iran for failure: Russia
Press TV – June 17, 2024
A senior Russian diplomat says the three European signatories to the Iran nuclear deal have failed to fulfill their commitments and are now blocking the negotiations to revive the US-abandoned agreement.
Russian Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov made the remarks in an interview with Russia’s daily broadsheet newspaper Izvestia.
He said the talks to revive the nuclear deal – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – have so far failed to yield any outcome due to insufficient efforts on the part of the European troika (France, Germany and Britain) as well as the United States.
It is not the Iranians who are blocking the negotiations now as they are ready to resume the talks, he maintained.
The top Russian negotiator added that the three European countries – also known as E3 – are playing a “strange game” but demand full compliance from Iran.
At the same time, the trio blames Russia and Iran for the failure of the JCPOA revival talks, Ulyanov said.
The negotiations to restore the JCPOA began in April 2021, three years after the US unilaterally withdrew from the UNSC-endorsed agreement and began to target Iran’s economy with tough economic sanctions.
Iran has criticized the lack of will on the side of the US and the E3 to revive the deal and has ramped up its nuclear activities in response to their non-compliance.
In a statement issued on Saturday, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany condemned what they called “the latest steps” taken by Iran “to further expand its nuclear program.”
They also accused Iran of taking “further steps in hollowing out the JCPOA, by operating dozens of additional advanced centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment site as well as announcing it will install thousands more centrifuges at both its Fordow and Natanz sites.”
Iran on Sunday strongly condemned the E3 statement as absurd and based on false allegations, saying the country’s nuclear program has a completely peaceful nature and nuclear weapons have no place in the country’s military and defense doctrine.
Germany dismisses undersecretary who ordered investigation into academics for pro-Palestinian support
MEMO | June 17, 2024
German authorities have dismissed an undersecretary who started an investigation into whether financial support for academics who defended students protesting Israel’s attacks on Gaza should be cut, Anadolu news agency reported.
Education and Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger announced Sunday the dismissal of Sabina Doring, the undersecretary responsible for higher education.
Underlining that initiating an investigation to cut financial support for academics contradicts the principles of academic freedom, Watzinger said: “In May of this year, a group of university lecturers wrote an open letter regarding the protest camps at universities. This is a legitimate part of debate and freedom of thought. Having a different opinion is equally natural,” she said.
Watzinger affirmed there is no doubt about the high value of academic freedom and its rightful protection under constitutional law.
“I defend academic freedom in all its aspects. Funding for science is based on scientific criteria, not political ideology. This is a fundamental principle of academic freedom,” she said.

